Kunstler: Narratives Are Not Truths

The polity is a social organism, of course, meaning that it adds up to more than the sum of its parts, a body of politics, if you will, just as each of us adds up to more than just our bodies. It’s alive as we are alive. We have needs. We have intentions in the service of those needs. Those intentions animate us and turn us in one direction or another to stay alive, and even more than that, to thrive.

The American polity is not thriving. It has been incrementally failing to meet its needs for quite a while now, playing games with itself to pretend that it is okay while its institutional organs and economic operations decay. It turns this way and that way ever more desperately, over-steering like a drunk on the highway. It is drunk on the untruths it tells itself in the service of playing games to avoid meeting its real needs. Narratives are not truths.

Here is a primary question we might ask ourselves: do we want to live in a healthy society? Do we want to thrive? If so, what are the narratives standing in the way of turning us in the direction?

Let’s start with health care, so called, since the failure to do anything about the current disastrous system is so fresh. What’s the narrative there? That “providers” (doctors and hospitals) can team up with banking operations called “insurance companies” to fairly allocate “services” to the broad population with a little help from the government. No, that’s actually not how it works. The three “players” actually engage in a massive racketeering matrix — that is, they extract enormous sums of money dishonestly from the public they pretend to serve and they do it twice: once by extortionary fees and again by taxes paid to subsidize mitigating the effects of the racketeering.

The public has its own narrative, which is that there is no connection between their medical problems and the way they live. The fact is that they eat too much poisonous food because it’s tasty and fun, and they do that because the habits-of-life that they have complicitly allowed to ev0lve in this country offers them paltry rewards otherwise. They dwell in ugly, punishing surroundings, spend too much time and waste too much money driving cars around it in isolation, and have gone along with every effort to dismantle the armatures of common social exchange that afford what might be called a human dimension of everyday living.

So, the medical racket ends up being nearly 20 percent of the economy, while the public gets fatter, sicker, and more anxiously depressed. And there is no sign that we want to disrupt the narratives.

A related narrative: the US economy is “recovering” — supposedly from a mysterious speed-bump that made it swerve off the road in 2008. No, that’s not it. The US economy has entered a permanent state of contraction because we can’t afford the fossil fuel energy it takes to continue expanding our techno-industrial activities (and there are no plausible adequate substitutes for the fossil fuels). We tried to cover up this state of affairs by borrowing money from the future, issuing bonds to “create money,” and now we’ve reached the end of that racket because it’s clear we can’t pay back the old bonded debt and have no prospect for “making good” on issuing new bonded debt. Recently, we have been issuing new debt mainly to pay back the old, and any twelve-year-old can see where that leads.

Reality wants us to manage the contraction of that failing economy, and because that is difficult and requires changing familiar, comfortable arrangements, we just pretend that we can keep expanding the old system. Of course, all the work-arounds and games only increase the fragility of the system and set us up for a kind of sudden failure that could literally destroy civilized society.

Another popular narrative of the moment — a dominant preoccupation among the “educated” elites these days — is that we can change human nature, especially human sexuality and all the social behaviors that derive from mammals existing in two sexes. This set of narratives is deeply entwined with fashion and status-seeking, with the greatest status currently being conferred upon those opting out from being either one sex or the other, along with the biological imperatives associated with one or the other. This has been identified by the essayist Hugo Salinas Price as an updated form of Gnosticism and is now the official reigning ideology of the college campuses. Some call it “cultural Marxism,” but it is really a form of religion. It offers colorful distraction from the more difficult adult tasks of managing contraction and rebuilding the political economy with its social armatures.

So, these conditions might prompt us to ask the more general question: how much longer do we, as a polity, want to pretend that narratives are the same as the truth? As I’ve averred previously, I think reality itself has to force the issue by delivering circumstances so compelling that it is no longer possible to keep telling yourself the same old stories. And that reckoning is not far off.

All three crazy “narratives” that Kunstler discusses are LIBERAL dogma supported and promulgated by the MSM.

Kunstler is wrong to say that “we” are telling ourselves these false narratives—actually they are being pushed on us by cultural elites in the D party and the MSM.

Cheers!

Ghung on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 12:40 pm

Plant, as usual, looks for a subset of society to blame rather than face the reality that she belongs to a collectively insane species, which confirms my assertion that Plant belongs to a collectively insane species.

Better sell that I-Toy and buy some preps! Once the shortages come gas stations only have a few days supplies. And that will be gone in a few hours with Preppers fueling up bug out trucks and bankers fueling up their private jets!

“Plant, as usual, looks for a subset of society to blame rather than face the reality that she belongs to a collectively insane species, which confirms my assertion that Plant belongs to a collectively insane species.”

You are right Ghung, we can only be saved by somebody who volunteered to study in the USSR in the seventies.

rolleyes.

dave thompson on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 2:19 pm

“The US economy has entered a permanent state of contraction because we can’t afford the fossil fuel energy it takes to continue expanding our techno-industrial activities (and there are no plausible adequate substitutes for the fossil fuels).” We need not say more.

Texas buys oil from all over the globe. That sticky crap nobody else wants. With our cheap nat gas for refining we mix fracked light oil and sell 500 mbpd. You may run out of fuel but Houston, the oil capital of the world will be just fine. 2 days ago I filled up at $.99 per gal. Not to reflective of your Saudi doomsday propaganda.

A possible Germany-Russia alliance, as I’ve written before, rounds up the China/Russia/Germany entente capable of reorganizing the entire Eurasian land mass.

The Russia-China strategic partnership is extremely attractive to German business, as it smoothes access via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). According to the business/political source, “the US is at war with China and Russia (but not Trump, our President) and Germany is having second thoughts about being nuclear cannon fodder for the US. I have discussed this in Germany, and they are thinking of renewing the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. No one trusts this US Congress; it is considered a lunatic asylum. Merkel may be asked to leave for the leadership of the UN, and then the treaty would be signed. It will shake the world and end any thought of the United States being a global power, which it isn’t anymore.”

Assad survived and Russia’s army got a valuable training in the battlefield.

MASTERMIND on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 3:46 pm

boat

Now you listen and you listen good. The IEA,UAE,UBS Bank,HSBC Bank, have also warned about worldwide oil shortages by 2020 as well.

MASTERMIND on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 3:49 pm

boat

Remember me when collapse hits. You deserve to suffer!

MASTERMIND on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 4:01 pm

Cloggie

KSA ain’t going to do shit to Qatar because they told the owner of Al-jazera and Assange that they have one nuclear bomb that is undercover. Just one though but that is all they need to level KSA. That is why KSA hasn’t done anything to them. They know what will happen.

Ghung on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 5:19 pm

Cloggo said; “You are right Ghung, we can only be saved by somebody who volunteered to study in the USSR in the seventies.”

We can’t be saved, Cloggoid. And I wouldn’t bother in your case. The only hope we have is a shitload of humility, species-wide,,, and that ain’t you.

Makati1 on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 9:22 pm

dave, yes, that sentence says it all. Not what spoiled Americans want to hear so they will put their fingers in their ears and go: “LA LA LA LA, I can’t hear you!” LOL

Plantagenet on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 9:48 pm

Gung’s assertion that she belongs to “an insane species” reflects her own insane point of view.

Cheers!

AM on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 10:04 pm

sorry but the written words and thoughts are proposionals and they’re invented to outmaneuver nature. If all men are created equal is NOT right to you then you’re right but you’re dead wrong. It’s only a proposition and the 2ND proposition means one better runs faster than 1000 MPH if he picks nature over proposition.

JuanP on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 10:18 pm

We can’t solve a problem if we can’t admit that we have it first. We can’t change human sexuality but we could very easily sterilize men and separate human sexuality from human reproduction. Vasectomies take five minutes and cost virtually nothing. We just lack the necessary intelligence and common sense as a species to implement this solution, but individuals may do it for themselves. I had a Vasectomy and no biological offspring and that is the smartest thing I did in my life. When I contemplate the contemporary destruction of human civilization, to me it is simply an intellectual exercise because I am not emotionally concerned about future generations’ wellbeing. I do what I can to help but I won’t cry for your children.

Go Speed Racer on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 11:13 pm

Won’t be a global oil shortage by 2020.
That’s only 2.5 years. Be realistic in your Doomerism.
It will take perhaps 8 years for the wells to pump down enough. That’s 2025. Should still be soon enough
to keep you popcorn popping cookers glued to
your TV screen with the remote all sweaty in your hand.

Makati1 on Mon, 31st Jul 2017 11:20 pm

Go, have you factored in the collapse? I don’t think so. 2020 IS a possibility if you do. Either way, 2020 is going to see a very chaotic America. Wait and see.

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 2:11 am

Go, have you factored in the collapse? I don’t think so. 2020 IS a possibility if you do. Either way, 2020 is going to see a very chaotic America. Wait and see.

American politics is THE focal point of the coming global instability. For a century now (since 1933), Washington has attempted to conquer the entire world for the self-chosen and en passant model the country demographically to become an example for the rest of the world.

If she fails to conquer the world, as she will, it means that the entire US politics/deep state/country will need to reinvent itself for a new purpose. The country will break up as a consequence and multicult will be forever discredited as a viable model for society.

And the self-chosen will experience a political downfall to the tune of 1492.

The complete rewriting of the history of the 20th century, essentially shameless American product placement, will be next. Expect Russia to open its war archives, accompanied with a mea culpa in the direction of Germany… and finally become accepted as a fully-fledged European country and bulwark against Chinese power.

Cloggie, I follow your thinking until you get to the point where Russia and China part ways. I don’t see that happening as long as Russia has the resources and China needs them. Certainly Europe has no resources left to bribe anyone with. I see China moving into Europe and dividing it with Russia. Or, both just ignoring what is left and moving East where the real opportunities will lay.

“Unfortunately, Americans have been so propagandized, politicized and polarized that many feel compelled to choose sides between defending the police at all costs or painting them as dangerously out-of-control.”

The American Gulag grows…

Cloggie on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 3:42 am

I follow your thinking until you get to the point where Russia and China part ways. I don’t see that happening as long as Russia has the resources and China needs them.

I don’t mean to say that Russia and China will become enemies, but you have to admit that this Russian-Chinese alliance is a direct result of the Western animosity against Russia. Putin-Russia wants to be in Europe, not be an appendix of the coming #1 super power China.

The happiest days in the political life of Vladimir Putin, together with Germany and France against the US, until 2008:

And even the Chinese know that in the end, after the end of the American era, Russia will be part of Europe, not Asia, as you can verify on the map. Worrying is that the Chinese leave open the status of Siberia on the map.

Has everything to do with European identity (=white Christian) and Eurasian balance of power.

I do not predict European-Chinese hostility, but expect European-Chinese preeminence in a multi-polar identitarian world order of the 21st century, after the end of the Communist (USSR)/cultural-Marxist (USA) 20th century.

Putin has reiterated, even AFTER Euro-Maidan, that he wants to be in Europe:

Interview beginning of June, 2014, president Vladimir Putin had with French media representatives on the eve of the D-Day commemorations in Normandy, France. At 16:39 Putin says:

Francois Mitterrand spoke of a European confederation with Russia as a member. I think this opportunity still exists. We will have it in the future.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 4:54 am

Really Cloggie? I don’t think so. He wants Europe’s money for his NG. He wants China’s also. Note the multi-billion dollar deals he already has with China. Russia straddles the whole continent so he has the best of both world’s. And, who is to say that he is even alive in a few years? Or us? lol

“But the IMF also cites China’s debt as a major threat: Failure to tackle the problem is one of the biggest risks to the outlook over the medium term. An inability to get to grips could result in a sharp slowdown that would ricochet throughout the world. So there you have it. The stimulus and fiscal expansion that’s kept China’s economy chugging away despite the doomsayers is cause for both thanks and concern. You can’t chastise a country for high levels of debt without acknowledging its role in supporting the global economy.”

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 5:43 am

How long can China’s debt explosion continue to support the global economy? Europe and the US can’t do this global support. Europe is preoccupied with its own internal debt issues. The US is trying to shrink its monetary balance sheet as we speak. Watch China and their debt for answers.

All this talk about a renewable future, geopolitical movements, and oil demand hinge on this direction of the global economy. Most here just discount the global economy because so many have been habituated to a status quo of adequate growth. Our board was not here in 08 when we had an economic earthquake. This last decade of adequate growth came from an extraordinary occurrence of a huge increase in central bank interventions. This extraordinary has become ordinary in our minds.

It has been most recently only China that continues this debt fueled growth. If this comes to an end so will the status quo global growth. It is unclear what the options are for something else. What can stimulate growth other than debt at this point in our late term civilization? Maybe we are in a new economic reality that allows debt to grow through extend and pretend for considerably longer than many of us thought or is an end lurking nearby to knock us from our stupor?

This “extend and pretend” is really only a form of wealth transfer. Confidence is maintained through a stealth system of parasitic wealth transfer. Dangerous unfunded liabilities and non-preforming debt is managed by a new system that parades as the old system of market based capitalism and liberal democracy of the rule of law. The incongruities of this new stealth system are excessive debt. This debt is messaged away in the shadows of lies and manipulation. Someone somewhere is laughing.

The reality is we are now part of a global system locked into an end game of repression and shadow wealth transfer. It is unclear just how long this can continue. It is in effect a grand Ponzi because the growth is debt based. Real productive activity does not represent the amount of growth indicated so in effect someone is giving up something to support someone else somewhere. That is a classic Ponzi. The rich have been getting richer and the middle class diminished is plenty evident but it is deeper because it is also the systematic erosion of the old with a new. There is still lots of growth but not enough to negate the analogy of a Ponzi. We must not forget our natural resource endowment is being plundered also with ecological destruction and depletion.

I have been a student of collapse now since 2000. This is where I have come to. Are we in a Ponzi that could last many more years? Can anyone really protest this situation? The reason I say this is what are the options? Where can any individual run? What nation can go its own way? Look at Trump’s nationalistic polices. It was only negotiated bluster. All Trumps bluster failed and they failed because no nation can go its own way. The one situation that could shatter all this is a biggish war. Other than that it is a self-organizing end game of an eventual rendezvous with fate. In many ways an unknown process with mysterious fortitude. This is a fate of a finite planet and a species in overshoot. The time frame for this process is confusing but the end game seems obvious or is it? That is where we are at. We are in a vast unknown.

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 5:45 am

Two old men discussing 20th century fantasies as the world speeds past them into a new reality.

pointer on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 5:54 am

MASTERMIND:

Where do you get this quote from? “The Oil Age may come to an end for a shortage of oil. -Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Yaman”

The quote generally known is:

“The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 6:22 am

Ah Davy is back from servicing his goats.

Those ‘two old men’ have more experience with change than you do, by many years. AND, neither live in the Gulag called America where facts are illegal and propaganda is rampant, along with drugs, murders, debt and denial. LOL

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:02 am

Ha, you identified with reality, makat. You know you are lost in your narrow binary agenda. You have been here for years wallowing in your failure. Where is the Bric bank or The Chinese reserve currency. Where is the collapse of the US. Years of whining and boasting for what? You have a little populism to give you support because everyone here hates America. You hate it the most. You try so hard to prove your hatred and look ridiculous in the process. To bad reality could give a shit about human emotions. Go service the boyfriend makat or is he your top and you the bitch?

Apart from making money from his oil, Putin has a geopolitical vision also.

I showed you straight from the horses mouth what he, the very successful leader of a country of 150m, thinks will happen in the world of geopolitics.

The opinions of an expat retiree, a programmer or a 1%-er turned goat herd do not really matter that much.

Russia straddles the whole continent so he has the best of both world’s.

He doesn’t. He is scared to death from China that is rapidly growing and will dwarf Russia economically.

Two old men discussing 20th century fantasies as the world speeds past them into a new reality.

Sneering is not an argument but a sign of intellectual laziness.

I have been a student of collapse now since 2000.

Collapse is your a priori, your dogma, like other people believe in Jesus or astrology.

Perhaps every now and then you challenge your own basic assumptions.

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:46 am

Cloggie, you can call revising history and fantasies of a future a sneer but I call it reality. Your eurotard energy transition is yet half baked and your geopolitical narrative yet fiction. You have nothing yet just talk. Yes, a renewable transformation is in the offing but the hardest part is ahead and by no means assured. Your eurotard vision of a Paris, Berlin, Moscow quasi empire/confederation is little more than a wishful fantasy of an old white man terrified of the brown hordes waiting at your door. You hate American and wish it’s end just like makat but it is here alive and stronger then your atrophied Europe. Join reality cloggie and sober up. You can do better than makatism.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:56 am

Davy, your delusions about the U$ Gulag are showing…LOL

“Total Government And Personal Debt In The U.S. Has Hit 41 Trillion Dollars ($329,961.34 Per Household)”
“A Mystery Investor Has Made A 262 Million Dollar Bet That The Stock Market Will Crash By October”
“Goldman Sachs Says That There Is A 99 Percent Chance That Stock Prices Will Not Keep Going Up Like This”
“Killing Them is Killing Us”
“North Korea or Iran…Where Will President Trump Attack First?”
“America Declares Economic War Against Europe”
““I’m Going To Redefine Terror”: Bay Area Resident Accused Of Aiding ISIS – Planned To Murder 10,000 People”

America, the dying empire.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:59 am

Cloggie, Putin is not “scared to death” of China. He just sees the writing on the wall and it is better to be the devils assistant than his enemy, as the U$ will soon find out.

Yes, a renewable transformation is in the offing but the hardest part is ahead and by no means assured.

So what’s your advise? Do nothing? Now that would be US-tard.

Your eurotard vision of a Paris, Berlin, Moscow quasi empire/confederation is little more than a wishful fantasy

You call Charles de Gaulle and Vladimir Putin “eurotards”. And what does that make of you, a total nobody.

old white man terrified of the brown hordes waiting at your door.

I’m furious, not terrified, because it won’t happen in my days.

You hate American and wish it’s end just like makat but it is here alive and stronger then your atrophied Europe.

You are mentally not stronger, America is in a state of much greater despair than Europe (because of demographics). I only have to read the posts here or other internet sources or watch a Trump rally on Youtube to get a grasp of the level of despair in the US and certainly with you.

I do not wish to see the end of (white) America, but I sure as hell wish to see the end of the US empire and its disastrous multicult NWO policies, devised by your kosher overclass, most of all disastrous for the US itself. But your loyalty is probably 60% with the US empire and 40% with “your kind”. Oops, racism alert.

Cloggie, Putin is not “scared to death” of China. He just sees the writing on the wall and it is better to be the devils assistant than his enemy, as the U$ will soon find out.

Of course. But I was talking about the time AFTER the end of the US empire and the post-Soviet-style disintegration of America.

AM on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 10:41 am

@maktard, when duterte is finished there’ll be nothing left in the phils. You know it’s 10x worse than venezuela right? Did you see abu sayaf beheading a bunch of people recently?

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:22 pm

Not long ago, there were news articles about India and Pakistan on the verge of Nuclear war, IF you believe the Imperial “News”. However…

“With both countries now full members of the SCO, conditions have emerged which favor the normalization of relations between Delhi and Islamabad. In the words of Pakistan’s PM Nawaz Sharif, who congratulated his Indian counterpart:”

“In other words, this enlargement of the SCO weakens America’s hegemonic ambitions in both South Asia and the broader Eurasian region. It has a bearing on energy pipeline routes, transport corridors, borders and mutual security, maritime rights.”

You might want to take a look at the map in that article. It shows the growing power of the SCO which now contains half of the world’s population in one big blob.

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 7:34 pm

AM, dream on. He has the support of over 75% of his people. The Ps GDP is growing at ~7% per year and government debt is under 50% (vs US 105%). The U$ is the one that will NOT survive Trump. Get a grip and an education.
You are drunk on that imperial Koolaid, not real world facts.

What beheadings? Give me a creditable reference. How about:

“Violent July Leaves Chicago Murders On Pace To Exceed 2016, The Bloodiest Year In Two Decades”
“”I’m Going To Redefine Terror”: Bay Area Resident Accused Of Aiding ISIS, Planned To Murder 10,000 People”
“Anarchy In America: Shot Down Like Dogs In The Street”
“Homicides In Baltimore Top 200, Expected To Break Record”
“The U.S. Empire Continues to Stumble Towards Ruin”
On and on…

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:26 pm

makat, my state has a similar GDP to the P’s with 6MIL people. Sounds like you are crowing about “nuttin”.

Davy on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 8:40 pm

This is the China Cloggie and makat boast about because they don’t know any better.
“China: A Keynesian Monster”http://tinyurl.com/yajqlnxs

“But traveling as the day gives in to night shows a very different picture of these sprawling Chinese cities. While the setting sun makes the tower cranes stand out even more, what is obviously missing is the sign of civilization: artificial lighting. Many of these newly constructed buildings become silhouettes against the sunset that are as dark as a dead tree trunk. One can stand in the middle of the city watching the glass-and-metal skyscrapers wrapped in neon lighting, as one would expect. Yet among them see many dark shapes of buildings that are empty – if not dead. These buildings are not necessarily new and move-in ready, they are simply uninhabited and unused. This image is one of wasteful spending and immense economic errors. The contrast is as puzzling as it is scary. It tells us something important about the nature of the recent Chinese economic miracle: that it is fundamentally fake.”

“What China teaches us about economics and economic policy is the lesson that is generally not provided in college classrooms: the important distinction within production between value creation and capital consumption. The story of China’s economic development is to a great extent one of unsustainable, centrally planned growth specifically in terms of GDP — but a lack of sustainable value creation, capital accumulation, and entrepreneurship. Production creates jobs even if what is produced is wasteful infrastructure projects, ghost cities, or only ghost buildings in otherwise inhabited cities. But those jobs only exist for as long as the projects are underway – that is, for as long as there is already created capital available to consume, domestically or attracted from abroad.”

onlooker on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 9:08 pm

Yep, they created temporary jobs for a temporary world. Like everywhere else, modern humans are living on borrowed as the consequences of overshoot bear in ever more

AM on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 9:25 pm

Make this is a repost of the suicide shower which is very popular in the Phil’s. This is just one of the thousands of death traps in third world’s. Go live in China too while you are therehttps://youtu.be/nHhLuVZNxnA

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:45 pm

AM, did you notice that the video is about PANAMA, not the Philippines? Idiot!

Makati1 on Tue, 1st Aug 2017 11:47 pm

Davy, apples and balloons. You live in a debt balloon that is about to blow up. I don’t.

You live in a country where every 3rd person is armed and most of them are already insane. I don’t.

I live in a growing country. You live in a dying country.

Should I go on? LMAO

TheNationalist on Wed, 2nd Aug 2017 9:27 am

When the Chinese army take Manilla I wonder if the Phillipinos will have dreams of a new Mcarthur?
Or will they see them as liberators like the Malayans saw the empire of the sun in 1941?
Initially they thought they would be more free too…

joe on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 1:04 am

https://dailyreckoning.com/fiat-currency/
Fiat currency fails in the long run. Right now the US is in the process of inflating its way out of debt, by creating debt. So where’s the inflation? The inflation is currently being stored up on the balance sheets of banks and on the stock market and in the bank accounts of the uber rich.
The trickle down theory does not work, and thank god it does not cause trillions of more dollars in a system with already low demand is not desirable. Bailed out institutional investors, systemic elements such as the FED/ECB/IMF are all direct buyers into the failed system, they are the pillars holding it up. The problem they have is how to unleash this ocean of currency into the low demand world without turning it into Weimar economics. Right now they have no answer. For years now there has been a failed push to force central banks to raise interest rates. This would allow bailed out governments to get into debt and suck money out of the banking system and artificially increase demand through direct investment and wage increases, but central banks understand one simple thing. There is nowhere for that cash to go. Society is aging and the population growth curve is flattening. Thats a model for disaster if you allow too much cash to chase too few goods. This is exactly what’s going on in the stock market. Econonic growth rates and business growth are not spectacular versus pre-crisis performances yet the valuations are enormous, this is unrealistic and therefore not sustainable so its a 1929 bubble collapse in the works. When it does burst they will attempt to bail out the market by flooding it with more currency. This could lead to a crisis of confidence like in 2008, but even the mighty US treasury might not have much faith in it any more if it happens, not with 20,000,000,000,000 of national debt. What will happen then is amid social and racial unrest, probobly civil wars like the Arab Spring and yet more refugee crises new global currencies will be created. But nothing will work. Nobody has faith in the system, we are just waiting for the next failure.

Makati1 on Thu, 3rd Aug 2017 2:27 am

Nationalist, MacArthur was an arrogant asshole who defied several presidents. Should have been court marshaled and/or shot, but we had a weak president then. No loss.

As for the Chinese taking over the Philippines. Why? The Ps has nothing that China needs that it cannot buy. It is no threat as long as there are no US bases here. And, there aren’t. There are Chinese all over the Ps, just as there are in the US. the Ps hosts the oldest Chinatown in the world. A great place to shop. They have been here for millennia.

It was the Japanese who took over the Ps in WW2, not the Chinese. It was the US that made it a colony for 50 years after another bloody war on Ps soil with the Spanish. It has finally gained some freedom from the US because the current Prez is smart enough to turn to the real powers in the region, China and Russia, and not kiss the imperial ass.

I suggest that you look at your own growing gulag called America. The police state is stepping into the open and you will not like what is coming. The powers that be have evil plans for the sheeple. Another few wars of choice will be the easier of the coming events. Better prep now, if you haven’t already.